The Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels once said: “A lie, when repeated often enough, soon becomes the truth.”

The PAP leaders are experts in distorting the message of the opposition. Instead of engaging the opposition candidates in public debates, they resort to twisting their words to obfuscate the issue at stake and using the state media to confuse, mislead and deceive Singaporeans.

The following examples highlight how good the PAP is at ‘turning white into black’ and put words into the mouths of opposition candidates.

1. Tan Jee Say’s economic proposals:

In his comprehensive economic proposal, SDP candidate Tan Jee Say proposed Singapore reduces its dependence on manufacturing and switch its focus on the service sectors.

Instead of countering Mr Tan’s arguments, PAP leaders dismissed them outright and accused him of proposing to ‘abandoning’ the manufactoring sector.

PAP Chairman Lim Boon Heng said Mr Tan’s suggestions would lead to companies moving their operations out of Singapore, and many families here depended on the sector for jobs.

Minister of State (Trade and Industry and Manpower) Lee Yi Shyan added that Mr Tan’s proposal to move away from manufacturing and focus on services, saying an economy without manufacturing would be difficult to imagine.

At a SDP election rally last night, Mr Tan accused the PAP of distorting his economic proposals:

“I did not propose closing factories and abandoning the manufacturing sector. What I said was that we should not promote manufacturing because it requires a lot of land and labour,” he said.

2. Workers Party’s housing proposals:

The Workers Party had proposed lowering the cost of HDB flats by reducing the land costs which caused PAP Housing Minister Mah Bow Tan to fly into a rage, accusing WP of ‘raiding’ the reserves.

The land for building HDB flats is ‘sold’ to HDB at market rates by Singapore Land Authority and the ‘profits’ made are channeled to Singapore’s reserves.

WP Chief Low Thia Kiang later clarified that WP did not propose depleting Singapore’s reserves to subsidize public housing. What it suggests is merely reducing the land cost by a bit in order to pass more savings to home buyers.

3. Dr Vincent Wijeysingha’s appearance on a ‘gay’ forum:

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan had rejected an invitation by the SDP to an open debate with its candidates in Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, but appeared to be more interested in ‘engaging’ them on a more ‘personal’ level.

After blatantly refusing to explain his YOG bursting its budget by more than three times, Dr Vivian tried to cast doubts on the credibility of Dr Vincent Wijeysingha by insinuating that he had a ‘hidden’ gay agenda just based on latter’s participation in a forum last year discussing gay issues.

His clumsy attempts to smear Dr Vincent didn’t go down too well with the ground and netizens lampooned him for resorting to ‘gutter politics’ instead of debating on the real issues at hand.

SDP Chief Dr Chee Soon Juan later clarified that none of SDP’s MPs, if elected, will pursue a gay agenda in parliament causing Dr Vivian to back down in embarrassment.

4. Opposition ‘raiding’ Singapore’s reserves:

PAP leaders are always quick to accuse the opposition of ‘raiding’ Singapore’s reserves while forgetting that they may have already been ‘raided’ by Temasek Holdings and GIC which lost billions of dollars of reserves during the global financial crisis in 2008.

DPM Teo Chee Hean fired the latest salvo at the opposition:

“The opposition parties forgot why we needed to use the reserve that gave us comfort. They want to raid reserves. To them, S$60 billion is small change. Ten zeros in this figure is not small change. It’s hard work.”

None of the opposition parties have ever proposed raiding or depleting the reserves. What they propose is merely investing a small part of the reserves in Singaporeans.

Contrast the PAP leaders’ sudden ‘concern’ for the reserves with Lee Kuan Yew’s cavalier response when he claimed that the reserves lost via Temasek and GIC can be ‘recouped’ in 10, 20 and 30 years because they are ‘long-term’ investments.

Singaporeans must stay vigilant and expose the blatant attempts of the PAP and its propaganda mouthpieces to distort the message of the opposition in order to confuse, mislead and deceive voters.

Some of the distortions may be very subtle, but will have widespread repercussions on the opposition’s chances in the coming election. They must be debunked immediately on the spot to stop the PAP from propagating them further.